Wraithstrike balance evaluation examples

[Nail]

... I would rather initially disallow something than to have to nerf it later or, worse, ban it later. ....

Agreed.

 

[satori01]

?

An extended Alter Self nets you +6 nat. ac for ages...where is the eggshell?

If you have poor defenses as a F/M it is out of choice.

"
This is just false. You need one feat. PA. The spell is effective at level 5 or so as a nice bonus to hit. As you level up it gets better and better....and better...

Which is a Third level spell, and with an Eldritch Knight build at 6 level you have a Bab of what....3? Wraithstrike is a drop in the bucket compared to a raging half orc barbarian.

Also, considering a casual gamer, I suspect that most casual gamers do not rely heavily upon metmagic defensive spells, especially spells that when one reads the condensed description in the spell list, sound more like what the spell was in the past, a disguise spell.

Now Alter Self is the combat boost, I turn into a Troglodyte spell.

I'm not sure how it works in your game, but in my games, being an urban campaign it is not always productive to go around in Trog form for hours on end. Especially since a clever charm person on the fighter to attack the Trog that is impersonating your friend, is pretty reasonable.

Wraithstrike is a problem when caster level and BAB are equal or near equal. For monsters, and for top end characters with Arcane Strike, the BaB of an Eldritch Knight and so forth.

Frankly at 20 th level my personal opinion is you almost need things like this. An extra 220 damage on Kyuss or Tiamat or Demogorgon is a good thing.

 

[Nail]

Frankly at 20 th level my personal opinion is you almost need things like this.

FWIW, in a previous game, when the PCs were 17th - 21st level, doing 200 hp of damage per round per PC happened all the time. Often the players would drop one 450 hp opponent per round when they were able to gang up on it. Yikes!

...if we had allowed wraithstrike, it would have been much worse. Even at 20th level, touch ACs were low (~20) for the attack bonuses.

 

[wildstarsreach]

I incline towards the spell being unbalanced but I think that this is too extreme of an example. First, it is based on a level 20 comparison. Surprisingly bad character builds and ideas can mature by level 20 to be very reasonable (Mystic Theruge).

Duskblades balance better across 20 levels than fighter/mages. They are stronger at low levels and way more effective at high.

I alos don't know about you, but my Fighter/mages seem to have a terrible time being able to set up full attacks at high levels because they suck at absorbing hits to position for a full attack. Reach helps enormously but, even so . . .

Last, there is a big deal made about Fighter/mages and power attack. I find defense is where my Fighter/Mages really need help and so I am much more likely to go with combat expertise than power attack. Wraithstrike would be a tool to be more defensive in most of my builds and make improved combat expertise a must have. It's true that at level 20 Power Attack was long the better choice but surviving to level 20 is tricky, in my experience, and these characters are really fragile from levels 2 to 6 or so.

Because thinking about it, unless I am suboptimal in my Fighter/Mage builds (seriously possible as I can put flavor over mechanics), you would have an "eggshells with hammers" situation. This is part of why Wraithstrike annoys me.

The other is the ability for it to bleed on other spell lists. Fighter Mages have to put a lot of work into making this combination effective (they need to be medium/high level, focus feats in way that pays off in the long run, go with a 2 handed weapon, etc . . .). It is unquestionably abusable by FMs after level 15 or so but other game balanbce problems are around at this point.

But any cleric who gets this feat will be devastating because they can afford the focus, have the BAB and are already great at defense (heck, Shield of Faith is one of the better counters to somebody who assumes that Wraithstrike is an automatic hit). It's unhelpful that there is already a mechanism to do this in the game . . .

Yes, I've said usually at the extremes. But in posts I've also shown where it starts to get bad around 9th level. My build for an eldritch knight would start at 1st as wizard with the collegiate wizard feat from page 181 of complete arcane, then 2 level of fighter, following 4 levels of wizard, 1 level of spellsword for arcane spell failure reduction, then 10 levels of eldritch knight and 2 level of wizard to top off.

The two levels of fighter early on is the biggest help. Getting 4 spells a level means my characters money to is level likely to be spent on spells and more likely on items or enhancements.

Feats that I think are essential are Collegiate Wizard, Weapon Focus, Arcane Strike, Practiced Spellcaster, power attack, improved critical, power critical. Others for taste or style of play.

 

[Mort]

Which is a Third level spell, and with an Eldritch Knight build at 6 level you have a Bab of what....3? Wraithstrike is a drop in the bucket compared to a raging half orc barbarian.

If you look at the numbers you'll see that this is not so after about 9th level.

this site has a pretty handy tool for calculating average damage (scroll down to Minmaxer 1.1). Plug in the numbers correctly and you'll see how fast wraithstrike outdistances the raging barbarian (if the fighter/mage is hasted,easy at 9th level +, it's an even larger disparity).

On the defense issue - I've played a fighter mage to 10th level so far and defense hasn't been bad at all. My current base AC is 21 (mithral chain shirt +1, ring of deflection +2, amulet of natural armor +2, Dex +2), Dragon skin puts that to 26 (lasts for 1 hour 40 minutes normally twice that extended, I got a rod of minor:extend, early) if I have 1 action to prep it goes to 30 (shield) and if I want to get cheesy (haven't done it lately) it goes to 36. I've found that an AC of 26-30 has served me just fine. Especially since I can throw up blur or blink for the miss chance. And if all else fails retreat is easy with dimension hop or dimension door.

As for Hit points, False Life (Extended lasts 20 hours!) goes a long way. If I get serious, empowered false life adds an average of 23 HP's (and if that gets low, I just use vampiric touch in a fight).

 

[Mort]

I'm not sure how it works in your game, but in my games, being an urban campaign it is not always productive to go around in Trog form for hours on end. Especially since a clever charm person on the fighter to attack the Trog that is impersonating your friend, is pretty reasonable.

This is a two edged sword. In our last session we were in the city and being watched closely by the watch to boot. Neither the fighter or the cleric could wear their plate mail (full plate for the fighter). I on the other hand had no problem with my mithral shirt or other protective gear (and if it was a problem I could fall back on mage armor for only a slight loss to AC).

 

[Mistwell]

What Mistwell is saying, and this is obvious, is that in the games he is playing in, WS is not a big problem.

Obviously, he knows, and he is right.

What other people are saying, who think WS overpowered, is that it's overpowered for D&D in general. In a specific campaign (such as Mistwell's) it might not be; but in a general sense, for a standard campaign, it quickly will be.

Again, this reminds me of the cranky and repetitive "Haste 3.0" debates that raged where people insisted Haste 3.0 was not "broken" or "too good" because it worked fine "in their campaign." That's super, but not really the point. And, of course, 3.5 proved who was right once and for all.

Since the "WS is too powerful" contingent has been very kind as to make builds, suggest builds, create spreasheets, etc. perhaps it would not be asking to much for a sample build of the type I am hearing a lot about in this thread. The, for example, "Scorching Ray" specialist doing huge damage, etc. And, to make the comparison even vaguely fair, the "Scorching Ray" specialist should manage the build using 1 spell-specific feat (power attack is the corollary for the fighter/mage build). And the "Scorching Ray" specialist should have at least two good saves and good hit points and good AC (like a typical fighter/mage). That's not asking a lot, simply... parity.

I am waiting a build. Any reasonable build. Ok. I was too restrictive. The "scorching ray" build can use THREE feats dedicated just to "scorching ray" i.e. that have little outside utility. But don't forget to get those saves and hit points high, and don't be a one-trick wonder! A Fighter/Mage with WS can also be a utility mage, have plenty of ranged feats, etc. after all.

PS: if you allow Touch attacks to ignore DR as may be the case in the RAW (debate still raging), WS becomes... well.. a god-killer.

Not going to go dig up the Scorching Ray build or the Ray of Enfeeblement build. They are not buried too deep, and I am sure you can find them if you look, if you are really interested.

My argument is that people should try the spell out in their game for themselves, in a fair way. That's it. Nothing you are saying disputes that. This continual back and forth whack-a-mole type debate doesn't seem productive to me. I could post an example, you would find ways to poke holes in it, you post a an example, and we poke holes it it, and it goes on forever. I say try the spell. You say don't try the spell. Why don't we leave it at that instead of trying to win a debate that isn't winnable?

 

[Mort]

Not going to go dig up the Scorching Ray build or the Ray of Enfeeblement build. They are not buried too deep, and I am sure you can find them if you look, if you are really interested.

My argument is that people should try the spell out in their game for themselves, in a fair way. That's it. Nothing you are saying disputes that. This continual back and forth whack-a-mole type debate doesn't seem productive to me. I could post an example, you would find ways to poke holes in it, you post a an example, and we poke holes it it, and it goes on forever. I say try the spell. You say don't try the spell. Why don't we leave it at that instead of trying to win a debate that isn't winnable?

It's all well and good to say "try it in your own game," but the real point of threads like this is to show where and how the spell can be overpowered to give DM's warning so they don't go through the same headache.
There have been ample builds showing how this spell is easy to break and when it starts to do so. Whether anyone chooses to heed that warning is completely up to them.

So better advise would be "go ahead and try this spell in your game; BUT be aware that if you see a build remotely like the ones discussed here, the spell is very likely to cause problems."

 

[Mistwell]

Okay Mistwell, would you like a game where spellcasting monsters could use this spell against your characters? Most characters have a touch AC of 12-20. Most AC's range from 15-30. That 10-18 point difference will generally mean the difference between life and death for a PC. Added to that if the creatures have power attack, then damage becomes exacerbated.

I would not mind it. We already prepare for touch attacks, because this is a far cry from the only touch attack in the game. Your claim about what most PCs have as far as touch AC, and other things that prevent or reduce the chance of a touch melee attack, doesn't match with my experience. The game in general seems to be drifting towards more and more touch attacks, and tactics should adapt to adjust for that drift if those things are going to be used in the game.

 

[Mistwell]

I agree. This is the heart of the debate IMO. This was also the heart of the debate in the monk's belt scenario, too. Some people have the opinion that brokenness can only be ascertained through actual play while others (like me) think that play is not necessary. I go one step further in that I would rather initially disallow something than to have to nerf it later or, worse, ban it later. IMO that approach is FAR more detrimental because trying to understand, in character, why you suddenly don't know wraithstrike or that it changed makes for a crappy game.

So, once someone can show that you can gain +29 to hit from this second level spell, to all attacks in one round, then it's broken and should be banned.

Indeed, that is the heart of this debate from my perspective as well, that many things appear overpowered on paper but turn out to not be overpowered in common use. I think that was the debate over the Warlock and Mystic Theurge when those classes were first released as well (though those debates seem to have died down).

And I am fine with that. In fact, I think it is the heart of most debates I have had with you Infiniti2K. Nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate your perspective on that issue, I think we just disagree about theory vs. use.